Be SMART with your goals...

Today's thoughts are not original with me, but they are worth sharing. What are you trying to accomplish with your weight loss strategy? If I were to ask you to write down your goals, what would you write? "To lose weight"? "To be healthier"?

 

Those are good things, but those are not really good goals. It's like going on a trip and saying, "I'm going east." When you set out on a journey, you are specific about where you are going, how you are going to get there, and how long it will take. When setting your weight loss goals, use the acronym SMART to decide what you are going to shoot for:

 

S - Specific. Be specific about your goals. "I want to lose 50 pounds." "I want to get my blood pressure down to normal." "I want to fit back into my size 8 jeans."

 

M - Measureable. Make sure your goals are measureable, so that you can gauge your progress. This usually involves setting goals that involve numbers, whether they be pounds, inches, or other units of measure.

 

A - Action-related. This involves setting goals for which you have the knowledge, ability, and tools to achieve. They have to be set according to what YOU are capable of achieving.

 

R - Realistic. If you set your goal at losing 10 pounds a week, you are going to give up, because by week 4, you're going to be about 30 pounds behind. Do not watch The Biggest Loser and think you are going to pull those kinds of numbers. They have a whole team of trainers, nutritionists, doctors, and other support people who guide them through carefully planned menus and insane workout schedules.

 

T - Time-related. Put a time component into your plans, with a starting date and a goal completion date.

 

Keep your goals specific, measureable, action-related, realistic, and time-related, and you will realize them sooner than you think!

A few tips...

Sorry there haven't been any new updates for a few days... things have been a little crazy for me. Readers of my regular blog and my facebook status updates know that I am struggling with some back/leg/hip issues right now - hard to focus on anything while suffering from severe sciatic nerve issues. Workouts are hard; sitting is hard; walking is hard; sleeping is even hard right now.

 

Just a few tips to pass along that anyone can do to help improve their weight loss:

 

1) Breathe. Breathing sounds so elementary, but most of us breathe shallowly, filling only the top portion of our lungs. But the real exchange of gases happens at the bottom of the lungs. When you have the opportunity, focus on taking deep breaths; breathe deeply by pushing your diaphragm in and out, not by raising and lowering your shoulders. Your diaphragm is the band of muscle directly beneath your ribcage and above your belly, and its purpose is to expand the thoracic cavity to allow air to fill the lungs. More air means more oxygen; more oxygen means more fat-burning.

 

2) Drink. Several times I have discussed the importance of getting enough water. Your water intake needs to be half your weight in ounces, so if you weigh 200 pounds, you need 100 ounces of water daily. But there are other drinks that will help you with your weight loss. Don't go crazy with coffee or diet drinks, but caffeine has been shown to help with weight reduction. If you get your caffeine through coffee, watch the cream and sugar. Use fat-free, sugar free alternatives to flavor your coffee. Green tea can also help burn calories, but again, not with sugar.

 

3) Move. After a satisfying meal, most of us move to the couch and vegetate for a while. Resist the urge, and go for a walk instead. Getting some exercise immediately after a meal (within 5 to 15 minutes) will help convert the food you just ate into fuel for muscles instead of stored fat. If you live a sedentary lifestyle, this is even more important.

 

4) Weigh. For those of you in our Healthy Again in 2010 group at Lumpkin Road Baptist, some of you have missed an appointment or two with the scale... don't do that! It's kind of like not checking your bank account regularly - when you finally do take a look, it's never as good as you think it should be. If you are trying to lose weight, I recommend weighing every day on your own, and definitely don't miss the weekly weigh-in. Weighing daily gives you the opportunity to make corrections in your diet immediately, instead of on a week-to-week basis.

 

5) Forget. Mess up this week? Move on, and don't look back. Figure out what caused you to get sidetracked, find a way to avoid it next time, and get on with business.

 

6) Commit. Your level of commitment will directly coincide with your level of success. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: little changes bring little results; temporary changes bring temporary results. If you want radical results, you HAVE to make radical changes.

 

Next time I will write about why most people fall off the wagon within the first 6 weeks of their diet.

 

Email: healthyagain@lumpkinroad.com

Blog: http://healthyagain2010.blogspot.com

 

 

"Why Can't I Just Work It Off?"

"I'm going to the gym every day, but I'm not losing weight - what am I doing wrong?" I'm starting to hear this from a lot of different people, both inside and outside our weight loss group at church. The plain truth is, working out every day is not going to make you lose weight if there is no change in your dietary habits.

 

Here's an example: you're in a hurry, and for lunch you run by McDonald's and grab a large number one meal (you order a large to get the large drink). This Big Mac Extra Value meal is 1350 calories. In order to offset that calorie intake (forget about the 1410 milligrams of sodium for a minute), you would have to do this much of the following exercises:

 

    * You could do 3 hours of non-stop high-impact aerobics

 

    * You could play full-court basketball for 2 hours

 

    * You could go mountain biking for 2.5 hours

 

    * You could play full-contact football for 2 hours

 

    * You could jog for 3 hours

 

    * You could walk at a moderate pace for 7 hours

 

You get the idea. The average overweight person cannot physically do enough exercise in one day to offset the effects of a high-calorie diet. The average American eats around 4,000 calories per day. In order to lose one pound per week without changing your eating habits, you would have to burn off 4500 calories per day. That translates to 10 hours of aerobics, 6 hours of basketball, 7.5 hours of mountain biking, 6 hours of full-contact football, 9 hours of jogging, or 21 hours of walking.

 

Let me know how that walking thing works out for ya!

A FREE Online Resource...

I can't take any credit at all for the information I'm about to give you, because a friend of mine alerted me to this site.

 

When we began Augusta's Biggest Loser, we were asking about the body bugg that they use on the TV show "The Biggest Loser". Turns out the body buggs are quite expensive, and you have to pay a subscription fee to upload your data to their website. My friend Eric alerted me to a site that he has been using in his weight loss journey, and it has a lot of great features. The site is www.fitday.com, and with nothing more than signing up, you get the ability to do the following:

 

* Track your food intake each day, broken down by calories, fat, carbohydrates, and protein

 

* Track your daily nutrients according to percentage of recommended daily allowance

 

* Track your progress through a journal, weight chart, and other means

 

* Add custom foods to the database simply by typing in the nutrition panel contents

 

* Input your exercise and see roughly how many calories you are burning each day

 

* Record your measurements (waist, arms, etc.) and track your inches lost

 

Basically, it's a poor man's "body bugg". The online version is completely free (although missing a few advanced reports that are only available in the paid version); for $20, you can download the software to your computer instead of using it online. All you have to do is create a username, a password, and give them an e-mail address. I have begun using it myself, and I absolutely love it. Eric asked me to take a look at what he had done, and I was able to immediately identify a couple of potential problem areas for him.

 

**Congratulations to the Lumpkin Road Baptist Healthy Again in 2010 participants - over the past two weeks, you all have lost a combined 125 lbs!!**

 

Email: healthyagain@lumpkinroad.com
Blog: http://healthyagain2010.blogspot.com

Do Weight-Loss Aids Really Work?

One of the things I have discovered by being at the gym at 5:30 every morning is that there are an awful lot of weight-loss and body-toning aids that are being hawked on television these days. From battery-powered belts that supposedly give you a six-pack, to devices that will tie you up in knots, it seems like there is a market for anything that will be a shortcut to diet and exercise. Our desire to be fit can be so overwhelming that we through common sense out the window, ignore all the "results not typical" small print warnings, and plunk down our hard-earned cash for a chance at the body/physique they show on television. Americans spend over $40 billion dollars a year on weight-loss aids.

 

Weight loss is no more complicated than this: removing factors like water retention, you have to create a 3,500 calorie deficit in your intake/output to lose one pound. This is most easily and safely done by a combination of eating less and exercising more. Even the commercials for exercise-centered video games for the Wii say in the fine print at the bottom of the screen that weight loss occurs when you create a 3,500 calorie deficit in your diet through proper nutrition and exercise.

 

There are some legitimate products out there that can help with weight loss - but consult with your doctor or your local professional weight-loss clinic before taking them. Some are legit, some are questionable, and some are downright dishonest and deceptive (like the colon cleansing products that claim you have 7 to 25 pounds of "gook" lining your intestines that needs to be cleaned out).

 

The plain ol' time-tested, boring path of diet and exercise is the best, and only real, way to make a permanent change in your life.

 

 

Weighing in...

Sunday is the weigh-in day for the Healthy Again group at Lumpkin Road Baptist Church (the rest of you reading along who do not attend our church will just have to skip over the church-specific stuff).  Here's a couple of weigh-in tips that apply to anyone.

 

1. There is a lot of debate over whether or not you should weigh every day. Some weight loss experts discourage it, because your weight can fluctuate from day to day (women are particularly susceptible to this problem). Some encourage it to keep you on track. Personally, I do weigh every morning - not to be obsessive about it, but because I can make mid-week adjustments to my diet if I sense a slow-down in my loss. If it slows, I eliminate some of the starches from my diet, or work a little harder on exercise, or make some other change. As part of the Augusta's Biggest Loser competition, our official weigh-in is once a week, but our nutrition center weighs us two other times a week. They only see their regular clients once a week, but because we are in a competition, they don't want to wait a week to see about changing our food plan. If there's a problem, it shows up in a couple of days instead of a couple of weeks.

 

2. To get an accurate weight each time on the scale, the following may be helpful:

 

    - Wear the same (or similar) clothing each time you weigh. If you are weighing in at the church on Sunday, this may be difficult. Just do the best you can.

 

    - Weigh at the same time each time you weigh in. There can be as much as a four-pound difference between what you weigh in the morning and what you weigh in the evening.

 

    - If you began by weighing without shoes, make sure you weigh without shoes each time.

 

    - When you step on the scale, stand up straight, look forward, and exhale. It's best to have someone else look at the dial / display for you, because when you lean forward to see your numbers, you are most likely going to put too much pressure on the front of the scale, which can distort your number either up or down. Swallow your pride and let someone else record your weight loss.

 

    - Tempting as it may be, don't try any "tricks" to artificially get your number down before you face the scale. Boxers and wrestlers know all the tricks to get their weight just exactly what it needs to be for the moment they have to weigh in. As far as I know, there are no boxers or wrestlers in our group. Don't delay more than one meal to face the scale (for example, if you weigh on Sunday night, postponing dinner until after the weigh-in is fine), but don't starve yourself on Sunday to get a good number. You could slow your metabolism down and make it more difficult for the pounds to come off later.

 

Eat right, drink right, exercise right, and let the scale worry about itself!

 

Email: healthyagain@lumpkinroad.com
Blog: http://healthyagain2010.blogspot.com

 

The Motivation to Keep Going...

What motivates you? This is an important question, because most people do not have it within themselves to simply will themselves to succeed in weight loss. You need to find what motivates you, incorporate it into your life, and use it to propel you forward. Here are just a couple of suggestions:

 

Media - there are movies out there with inspirational speeches, scenes of people giving their all, etc. Go to youtube.com and do a search for inspiration or motivation. You will find movie scenes, speeches, etc., that will put just a little more hunger in you (no pun intended) to achieve your best. I throw in a Rocky movie every now and then to watch Stallone exercise, and to see the results. I listen to the speeches the coach makes from "Facing the Giants".

 

Pictures - for those of you who have just a little bit of weight you want to lose, pictures are probably not going to be very motivational. But if you are wanting to make a change in your appearance, there's a couple of ways you can use photos to your advantage. If you have a picture of you at, or near, the weight you want to be, pull it out and put it somewhere where you will see it often. Another way to use the camera to your advantage is to keep a picture record of where you start at, and take a new picture at significant points during your weight loss. I had my starting pictures, and then one at 50 pounds down, and my most recent one is at 80 pounds down. Keep the new pictures side by side with your old picture, and you will be astounded at the difference. There's something about looking at yourself in a photo that is significantly different from looking at yourself in a mirror.

 

Your health status - many people who are trying to lose weight are doing so to improve their blood pressure, cholesterol, or some other indicator of quality of health. Have your numbers checked regularly, and watch them come down as you live a more healthy lifestyle.

 

There are other ways to motivate yourself, such as posting relevant scripture verses or motivational sayings around your environment. But there is one type of motivation that we do not want you to do, and that is to reward yourself with food. Many people, after they have had a good weigh-in, will go and "treat themselves" to some off-limits food that they are wanting. Not only do you have the potential of wrecking your diet with a cheat (even a little one), but you are reinforcing the behavior that assigned an emotional attachment to food, and that emotional attachment is what got many of us into this place to start with. Food should neither be a reward nor a punishment; food is the fuel your body needs to burn off excess fat, and to continue functioning day-to-day. Until you change your mind about your food, you are not likely to make permanent changes in your lifestyle.

 

Email: healthyagain@lumpkinroad.com
Blog: http://healthyagain2010.blogspot.com